Alison Krauss & Union Station Fly Paper Airplane to the Top

After years of coming close, Alison Krauss & Union Station saw their new CD — Paper Airplane — debut at No. 1 on this week’s Billboard country albums chart. It also bowed at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 all-genres tally.

Krauss nearly entered at the top in 2007 with Raising Sand, her project with Robert Plant, but she had to settle for breaking in at No. 2.

According to Nielsen SoundScan, Paper Airplane sold 82,987 copies its first week out.
Let’s have a few cheers and some whistles, too, for Darius Rucker, whose tersely titled “This” rises to become the week’s most-played country song.

There are just two other new albums to mention: the various artists collection, Country Strong, coming in at No. 53 and the multi-artist package, Lost Highway: 10 (No. 70).

Albums re-entering the chart are Country Strong: More Music From the Motion Picture (No. 16), Hank III’s Rebel Within (No. 60) and the Grascals & Friends: Country Classics With a Bluegrass Spin (No. 74).

Rounding out the Top 5 albums, in descending order, are Jason Aldean‘s My Kinda Party (last week’s No. 1), the Country Strong soundtrack (yes, there are three Country Strong CDs on the chart), the Zac Brown Band’s You Get What You Give and Taylor Swift‘s Speak Now.